The risks are particularly high in Niger, where the United States has deployed more than 1,000 troops and operates a drone base that officials say is vital for monitoring extremist groups in the Sahel region, which stretches across Africa below the Sahara.
US Assistant Secretary of State Molly Fee, the State Department's top official for African affairs, said she did not mince her words when she traveled to Niamey, Niger's capital, in December to negotiate with Niger's prime minister and other Cabinet members. She said she urged Niger's junta to rebuild its relations with other countries, especially with the regional bloc of West African states known as the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, which is seen as an ally in efforts to restore democracy in the country. region. She stressed that US aid will remain suspended until Niger sets a timetable for restoring democracy.
“We made the choice as stark and clear as possible,” Fee recalls.
But in the two months since that meeting, Niger has moved largely in the opposite direction. The government has not yet announced a timetable for holding elections, and continues to hold democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum under house arrest.
Niger left the Economic Community of West African States last month after nearly 50 years with Mali and Burkina Faso. These countries created their own coalition of Sahel states, deepening the rift in West Africa between the three military-led states and those with democratically elected presidents. An ECOWAS official announced on Sunday the lifting of sanctions imposed on Niger, marking a softening of the bloc's position as it pressures the three countries to rescind its decision.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to make gains in the region. Fei's visit to Niger came immediately after Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus Bek Yevkurov signed new security agreements with the military junta. In Burkina Faso, more than 100 Russian soldiers from the African Legion – headed by Yevkurov and described by Russian officials as the successor group to the Wagner mercenary group – have arrived in the past two months. In Mali, analysts estimate that more than 1,000 Russian soldiers, first with Wagner and now with the African Legion, are fighting alongside Malian forces against separatists and Islamic extremists.
During a trip last month that included stops in Ivory Coast and Nigeria, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the State Department was “focused intensely on the challenges facing security in the region, in the Sahel.” He warned countries in the region of the consequences of deepening ties with Russia, noting that those who worked with Wagner saw the problems “obviously getting worse and worse and worse.”
General Michael Langley, who heads US military operations in Africa, said in an interview that it is up to policymakers to determine the size of the Russian presence that can be accepted in Niger before the United States adjusts its troop presence.
As the United States seeks to continue operations in Niger, Langley said the Department of Defense is “also exploring its options” to conclude new security agreements with other West African countries, including Ghana, Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast. He noted that they are beginning to see violence in the Sahel region “spreading across their borders.” The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the United States was in preliminary talks about deploying American reconnaissance drones at airports in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin.
The air base in northern Niger, built six years ago at a cost of $110 million, was vital for monitoring extremist groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which have increasingly made Africa, rather than the Middle East, their main theater. Langley said. Since Niger's coup in July, activity at the base has been limited to surveillance to protect American forces.
Langley warned that if the United States closes the drone base, the move will have an “impact” in Niger and the region, and on the broader US counter-terrorism strategy. “If we can't see, we can't feel,” he said. “If we lose our footprint in the Sahel, it will reduce our ability to conduct active surveillance and warning, including homeland defense.”
J. Peter Pham, a former US special envoy to the Sahel, said the United States is powerless in negotiations with African countries, especially those run by juntas, because it cannot provide the same amount of security support as Russia, including weapons and personnel. On the ground.
“It's like a doctor diagnoses you with a disease and then refuses to write the prescription,” Pham said. “If we're not willing to write the script or administer the medication, we can't really complain about the patient going to someone else who administers the treatment, no matter how harmful it is.”
When soldiers in Mali ousted their president in 2020, the first in a recent series of coups in the Sahel, the US State Department immediately froze security aid. But Pham said he remained in close contact with Mali's military leaders, including meeting monthly with interim President Assimi Goita.
Pham, who left his post in 2021 and has not been replaced, said the relationship between the United States and Mali deteriorated in part because of the State Department's decision in 2021 to block the sale of a transponder for an unarmed transport aircraft sought by Mali. Government. This effectively ended the purchase, Pham said, prompting Mali to consider the aircraft offered by Russia. Later that year, Pham noted, as Wagner's soldiers arrived in the country, Malian officials became increasingly isolationist, asking the French military – which had for years been running counterterrorism operations in Mali – to leave in 2022 and for the United Nations to close its mission in 2020. the past. .
The United States then turned its diplomatic focus to Burkina Faso, which had seen two coups in 2022, but was then seen as more willing than Mali to set a timetable for restoring democracy and less interested in working with Russia. A delegation from the White House, Pentagon and State Department, which visited Burkina Faso in October, warned President Ibrahim Traoré that working with Wagner would constitute a red line.
Senior State Department and Pentagon officials had been pushing until last summer for a non-lethal security aid package for Burkina Faso's military, arguing that the threat posed by the Islamist insurgency required action despite concerns about human rights abuses by the military and allied militia forces. . But such plans appear to have been halted in the wake of Niger's coup.
Then last month, a 100-member contingent of Russia's African Legion deployed to Burkina Faso “to ensure the safety of the country's leader, Ibrahim Traoré, and the people of Burkina Faso from terrorist attacks,” and another 200 military personnel from Russia are scheduled to arrive soon. , according to the group. Traoré said last month in an interview with journalist Alain Fouka that the Russians are providing training and equipment but are not yet fighting on the ground, although they will do so if necessary.
Without mentioning the United States by name, Traoré criticized countries that claim to be friends with Burkina Faso but say they cannot sell lethal weapons. “Where is the friendship?” Asked. He added that with Russia, there are no restrictions on arms sales, and it sells Burkina Faso soldiers “whatever we want.”
In Niger, some residents said the benefits of the US military presence were never clear, while they could see that the Russians had helped Mali reclaim territory from rebels. “We want the Russians to come,” said Maria Sali, an activist in Niamey. “We are waiting for them. We are waiting for them with bated breath.”
Until the coup, Niger represented a bright spot in the region, enjoying democratic governance and effective military cooperation with France and the United States.
A few weeks before Niger's military leaders seized power, Langley was attending a conference in National Harbor, just outside the capital, with U.S.-trained Nigerian General Musa Barmo. At the time, Parmo was espousing his “commitment to democracy, civilian rule and the fight against terrorism,” Langley recalls.
But on July 26, Bermo was among the coup leaders. “It was a big surprise to me that this happened,” Langley said.
